Motivation Over Discipline
Why "discipline over motivation" won't get you the results you are looking for.
We’ve all heard it:"Discipline over motivation.”
You see it repeated over and over again, you hear it preached all over the internet, and maybe at this point you believe it too. Maybe it’s even something that you tell yourself whenever you don’t feel like doing the things you know you must do. Maybe it’s become a central tenet of your personal philosophy. But is this the way you should structure your reasons for acting or abstaining from acting in a certain way?
Yes, discipline is great.
Discipline is essential. It’s 100% and categorically a virtue all men should cultivate. A man with no discipline is a man that won’t ever do the hard things that are required of him. An undisciplined man is just a grown child, subjecting his actions to whatever he feels like doing any given day. And in case it wasn’t clear already, a big part of being a man is precisely doing what you ought to do, not what you feel like doing.
I’m obviously not against discipline. Discipline matters.
But discipline is very hard to come by. Attempting to build discipline for the sake of building discipline is too often a losing battle. You will struggle constantly and let laziness beat you way too often unless you realize that discipline requires something higher.
Discipline over motivation?
I’m also not bashing the hierarchy of the “discipline over motivation” concept. It’s true that motivation is fleeting and very often hard to come by. It’s true that many times it cannot be controlled and that means that letting your actions be determined by whether or not you feel motivated is not a wise strategy.
Discipline over motivation is correct, too. You need to build enough discipline to be able to act whenever motivation isn’t there.
But here’s where it gets interesting. The hierarchy of factors that lead a man to act in a certain way goes way beyond discipline or motivation. In that sense, discipline over motivation shows just a tiny part of the hierarchy, not the whole picture.
Discipline over motivation, yes, but is there something even higher over discipline?
What’s above discipline?
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